


You've Always Been Beautiful

by curiouslykatie



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Depression, Eating Disorders, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2017-12-05 15:57:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/725124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curiouslykatie/pseuds/curiouslykatie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jade and John finally join everyone on the meteor. Jade struggles with not feeling good enough for Karkat and stops eating. Can Karkat help her?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pain

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in a kind of AU I have where Jade and John join everyone on the meteor but don't actually leave for a month or two so a) they can get ready for what's next and b) they don't want to leave all their friends in the dream bubbles.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jade hasn't eaten in eight days.

Jade curled up in a ball, shaking, tears soaking her dark messy hair. The hunger pains were unbearable. Two days of fasting was a low, empty feeling throb. Day four marked the point where the cramps stopped for a day or two after she got over the three day cliff of her body getting used to the lack of nutrients.

  
Day eight was a fire-hot sword twisting and slashing in her stomach and crawling to the bathroom every hour to vomit up stomach acid.

  
She stretched out a shaking hand and grabbed a capless half-empty water bottle from the floor, slopping most of it on the cold industrial floor of her bedroom as she rolled it towards her, pressed it to her lips and drank.

  
 _Breathe_ , Jade told herself. _You've gotten this far._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments help me write better! :)


	2. Comparison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How it all started.

Jade had never cared about what she put in her stomach before she and John joined everyone on the meteor. She had been so excited- about seeing Dave again and what Rose would look like in person and if Karkat was really grumpy all the time and meeting all the new trolls- the first day or two had been the best days she could remember in three years. Karkat had made an effort to cross his arms and look uninterested in their arrival but when she threw her arms around him, laughing, he broke and hugged her back tightly. When Rose introduced her glowing girlfriend Kanaya, blushing slightly, Jade had squealed and hugged both of them. Dave grinned when she woofed accidentally in her happiness at dinner the first night, her fluffy ears moving every direction. But the excitement wore off after a couple days, and she and John became a normal part of the meteor, and everyone went back to their normal routines. Rose was always with Kanaya, and Dave spent most of his time with John.

And Karkat- she tried to ignore the ache in her chest when she saw him curled up in the library reading one of his romance novels or how he rubbed his sweater sleeve over and over when he was stressed or when he actually smiled at her amazement over the differences and similarities of their homeworlds when she asked him to explain life on Alternia the very first night. She literally forgot to breathe happened and mentally slapped herself the next moment.

 _Karkat isn't a possibility_ , she told herself at the end of the first week, laying on top of her bed, feeling tears roll down her face. _Karkat has Terezi and you are nothing like Terezi, or even like Karkat. You are over enthusiastic even when you aren't feeling it and you really don't completely understand blood color or troll romance and you aren't nearly as pretty as any of the girls on this stupid rock and-_

The last thought stopped her dead. On her island, she never cared about how she looked, simply because there was no one to impress. The one time she ever truly cared about her appearance was when she went frog hunting with Dave and she wore that dress. But now she thought about it. Jade thought about how beautiful Rose was and Kanaya's elegantness and how pretty Terezi was when she smiled. She rolled off the bed and stood in front of her mirror, running her hands over her hair and poking her arms and abdomen. Still slightly bucktoothed, incredibly gangly and awkward, and sort of soft all over. Unfit from three years of watching movies with John. Her face and body had none of the sharp, graceful angles Terezi or Rose had. She didn't have delicate arms or visible collarbones. She knew she was technically _healthy_ , but... healthy wasn't always _pretty_.

Jade spun and slammed her fist against the hard grey cinderblock wall and smiled at the pain through her tears.

She told Kanaya she tripped when the bruises appeared the next day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like comments. Comments make me happy. <3


	3. Calories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's just a few calories at first. Just a few calories not eaten that quickly become more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've made some edits to this chapter after going back and revising where I wanted my story go, but nothing too major.

It was easy at first to get rid of a few calories every day. She filched a digital scale from John's house and a length of measuring tape- 5'6" and 124 pounds. She remembered reading on the internet somewhere that you had to cut out 500 calories a day to lose a pound a week. That was easy. She stopped snacking- she wasn't really hungry when she went nomming on cookies midafternoon anyway- and drank water instead of coffee or tea with spoonfuls of extra sugar. A week went by, and she stepped on the scale and saw she had lost half a pound.

So she started listing everything she ate on a Word Doc on her computer. She ate something light for breakfast. Skipping lunch was easy because everyone ate at different times. When they all sat down together for dinner, she took extra overcooked vegetables and pretended she was too full for whatever dessert Rose had put together. Black coffee made her appetite go away, so she slurped it hot throughout the day before it grew its weirdly colored film.

Week two weighed her in at 122 pounds. Two pounds lost was an okay start, but not nearly enough to her. She saw with new eyes what everyone else must have been seeing the whole time- what Karkat must have been seeing- the way her stomach was pudgy round instead of flat and how she couldn't see her rib bones. Just a few more pounds taken off would fix everything.

Jade found that if she drank a lot of water throughout the day, she could skip both breakfast and lunch and pretend she wasn't hungry. At dinner, she took a small portion and ate a few bites, pushed it around her plate, and drank a mug of black coffee instead. Karkat confusedly asked if she was still hungry and looked at her mostly full plate when she denied ever being hungry, but soon let it drop. She would eat a small bowl of raw carrots and celery later and ignore how fast her heart beat when she stood up quickly.

She fasted for four days, getting huge lunches and throwing it all away in her room and telling everyone she was still adapting to her new slightly canine body and it was throwing off her hunger schedule so she didn't want dinner. Jade spent her lunches in front of the mirror on the scale instead. She had never been so grateful for celery on day five, and slashed three lines on her thigh to punish herself with a broken piece of a drinking glass she smashed.

On the last day of the month, Jade closed her eyes as she climbed onto the evilhorriblebestfriend scale. She dug her nails into her arm and opened her eyes.

113.

The digits made her feel sick to her stomach. 10 pounds away from her first goal. If only she could have lasted a day or two more fasting.

 

* * *

That night while she and Karkat were washing the dishes of another dinner thrown in the garbage, Karkat turned to her, grey  hands covered in soap, looking hesitant.

"Do you think humans eat less than trolls?"

Jade froze, dropping her sponge into the water of the sink. She fumbled for it and tried to think of an answer.

"I guess we could. I don't really pay attention to how much you eat, you know," Jade chirped, pasting on a smile.

"Well, you eat less than any of us. I was wondering if it had something to do with your biology maybe," Karkat said.

She felt sick and focused on trying not to throw up in the sink. "I was almost always asleep at typical meal times, so I ate at really random times. I ate dinner at midnight a lot. I'm not used to eating when you do. I'm never hungry when you all want to eat. I just eat whenever I finally get hungry."

He looked a little more relaxed. "That makes sense. Rose said it was probably something like that."

She brushed the back of her hand against her newly showing collarbone and felt her heart sink at the implication of his words. He was noticing. No one could notice.

"You don't need to worry about my eating habits, Karkat, I'm fine."

He looked unsure, but dropped it.


	4. Invitation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Numbers are taking over Jade's mind, but maybe someone can help her forget for a little while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I haven't mentioned this yet, I'll say it now. I am not pro-ana or pro-mia in any way. I just like writing angsty stories because I can funnel my emotions into them, I read all the sad JadeKat stories here so I decided to write my own, and while Dave, John, and Rose all have ED stories, Jade didn't. And because I relate to Jade the most, I wanted her to have issues too and not be so enthusiastic all the time. I can't believe I'm doing this but I'm on a roll now.

Desperate to reach goal one- 103- Jade added exercise to her daily routine of starvation, but was careful to hide it, her conversation with Karkat making her afraid of raising more suspicion. Working out even a little sent cold adrenaline through her veins as her blood sugar level dropped, and she loved it and embraced it. She did sit ups and planks in her room until her limbs shook and her muscles burned. She was pushing her body into a zone she had never explored before, and Jade felt like she could fly.

  
That is, until she went for a 2am run through the dim corridors of the meteor, bare toes silently hitting the ground. She rounded a corner sprinting, saw stars burst in her vision, and collapsed forward, feeling like she was going to be sick.

  
Jade rolled onto her back on the grey cement and lay there for a minute, hands shaking. Getting dizzy and feeling lightheaded wasn't new- she felt like that almost all day now- but it hadn't ever been so strong before. She briefly contemplated getting an apple from the kitchen, which wasn't too far away. A few extra calories couldn't hurt. And it would stop the dizzy feeling.

  
 _Yeah, if you want to gain back the ones you just spent an hour burning off. Do you want your cheeks to puff up again? Not to mention your arms are still so flabby._

  
She took a deep breath and pulled herself up using the wall, and slowly walked back to her room.

* * *

"Harley!"

  
Jade glanced up from her book, startled. Karkat stood next to her armchair, looking annoyed, like he had been there for a while. He probably had- the library was usually deserted after dinner as everyone went to bed and she often zoned out while reading a new book if people weren't bothering her. Which was good when she was trying to take her mind off the pain in her stomach, but not so good if someone was trying to get her attention. She closed it, smiling sheepishly and unfurled from her tightly curled reading position. "What's going on?"

  
"For someone with woofbeast hear handles you have remarkably poor hearing when you're not paying attention to your surroundings," Karkat said, rolling his eyes. She threw her bookmark at him.

  
"You're here because you decided to test my hearing?"

  
"Yeah, I was overcome with a sudden interest in the sensory abilities of our group. I've already planted licorice around Terezi to make sure she didn't mistake black scented things for Noir, I figured your ears were ne-"

  
"Karkat!" she interrupted, trying to look annoyed but laughing instead. "Just tell me what you wanted!"

  
He crossed his arms over the grey cancer symbol on his sweater defensively and looked at the bookshelf behind her. "I was just going to ask if you wanted to come watch a movie with me. No one else is up."

  
She tried not to let shock register on her face, and pinched the inside of her wrist so she wouldn't do something stupid like bark in reply. "Um, yeah. Sure!"

  
Karkat's eyes flickered to meet hers and he dropped his arms. "Really?"

  
"Yup," Jade replied. She stood up and captchalogued her book. "John and I watched all his like a hundred times. I haven't seen a new movie in three years!"

  
Karkat blinked. "Well, okay then. Good. Great. Whatever." He turned and started towards the door, but not before Jade saw his cheeks go slightly red. She pushed down the impulse to touch his face- _you're not good enough you aren't pretty enough he doesn't want you he'll never want you_ \- before falling into step beside him as they headed around the corner. All the bedrooms were in the wing of meteor behind the library and in front of the computer lab, and though Jade's was diagonal to Karkat's, she had only ever visited Rose's, across the hall.

  
Karkat opened the door to his room (or was it... respiteblock? She was still getting used to troll vocabulary) and dramatically waved her in. She stuck her tongue out at him as she did and the corner of his mouth quirked up in the ghost of a smile as he closed the door behind them, so slightly she wasn't sure if he actually had.


	5. Movie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watching a movie with Karkat should be a good way to distract Jade from her hunger. Until other feelings take over.

Karkat walked over to the desk and flipped open his laptop.

"Okay, I brought a couple of my DVDs onto this rock. I had them captchalogued before we even started playing SGRUB," Karkat said, staring blankly at the wall behind Jade for a moment as he looked through his sylladex. He made a slight flicking motion with his wrist to close it out and a group of plastic DVD cases materialized above his bed and fell down.

"I thought trolls had... recuperacoons? Weird slime pools, not beds," Jade mused.

Karkat rolled his eyes. "Okay, first, recuperacoons are superior to the weak trampolines humans sleep on in like every way possible. Second, it's not like any of us packed up our hives when we started the game, and we don't have sopor on this meteor anyway. The lab had beds, so we adapted." He walked over and glanced over the covers of the DVDs, which seemed to be mostly large paragraphs of text. "Do you want to pick the movie? There's _Hard-working Troll Is Coerced Into Faking A Redrom Relationship With His Uptight Boss, And Though Both At First Have Mild Blackrom Feelings For Each Other They Both Become Truly Flushed After Many Humorous And Trying Circumstances_ , and this one's a classic- _Two Moirails Flip To Redrom Occasionally To The Mutual Benefit Of Both Until They Find A Real Red Quadrant Partner_..." He trailed off, mumbling the absurdly long titles to himself.

Jade scanned the movies. "Are these all romcoms?"

Karkat's cheeks went red. "Yeah, so?" he barked.

She giggled at his reaction. "No, it's fine! The last movie John and I watched was Season of The Witch, this Nick Cage one, anything has to be better than it. The first one you said sounded interesting, what about that one?"

He took the disc out of its case and stuck it in the side of the laptop, then recaptchalogued the rest, and turned the laptop so it faced the bed.

"You can like, sit, or something," he muttered gruffly. "I'm going to go get a snack from the kitchen. Want anything?"

_Yes please anything and everything I'm so hungry_

Jade smiled brightly. "Nope, I'm good. Thanks though."

He nodded and left. She kicked off her shoes and sat in the middle of the bed, back against the wall. Karkat came back in a minute later with a couple of pudding cups.

"Since when does the kitchen give us pudding?" Jade asked.

He tossed the pudding and two spoons next to her knees, hit play on the laptop and then sat next to her, stretching out his legs. "Since Strider decided that he wanted some a couple months ago, and we tried getting some and it worked." He picked up a spoon and peeled the top off one of the cups as the intro music started, and held it out to her.

"Oh, no thanks," she said blithely. "I'm not hungry. It's pretty late."

"Harley, you barely touched your food at dinner."

She dug her nails into the soft fleshy bed of her thumb in panic. A couple hundred calories for what, six or seven bites? It wasn't worth it. How long could she make up excuses?

"Yeah, because the food we have is terrible. Anyway, I really don't like pudding. The texture is gross. Now shh, I'm actually interested in this movie, I've never seen a troll movie before."

Karkat made a face at her, but started eating it himself as they watched the film.

It wasn't as weird as she expected it to be- there were a lot of flipping redrom-blackrom things with even minor characters that she didn't really understand but the plot between the two main characters was amusing and it wasn't too different from an Earth movie. Karkat kept explaining things about quadrants when Jade looked confused even if she didn't ask, which made the whole thing easier.

The movie ended with the troll guy confessing being completely flushed for the troll girl, which was adorable enough to make her tear up. Karkat swiped at his eyes when he thought she couldn't see, which was kinda more adorable than the movie.

The credits rolled, and Jade tried to keep the disappointed look off her face. She slid off the bed and put her shoes back on, then turned and smiled brightly at Karkat.

"Thanks for letting me watch a movie with you. It was fun," she chirped, trying to feel the emotion she was pasting on.

He slid to the edge of the bed. "Um, sure," he said, quiet for once.

Jade paused. She couldn't swallow from the lump in her throat and her palms were sweating and her heart hurt in a way that in any other circumstance would have been very very wrong. She wished she could turn it off because there was no point in wishing and wishing for someone who didn't care.

If love felt felt like so much like dying, why was everyone so happy to throw themselves into it?

She leaned down quickly and kissed his cheek. Karkat turned red and drew away, staring at her speechlessly.

"Goodnight," Jade said, trying to sound normal. She turned and left, back to the loneliness of her own room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're wondering why I chose pudding cups, it's because I reblogged a cute davekat fanart where Karkat was eating a pudding cup on the meteor before writing this and it was in my mind.
> 
> Please comment and tell me what you thought! :)


	6. Falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jades problem catches up with her.

She realized she could feel Karkat watching her.

It wasn’t constant, or outright, but enough to make her feel uncomfortable and exposed all over. She caught him staring at her in the main room when she was on her laptop sipping coffee, three layers of clothing on to keep her thinning body warm. He glanced up at her every time she spoke when she occasionally joined everyone for dinners, his eyes sweeping her plate and the fork she kept in her hand but never brought to her lips. 

And just now, when she walked into the kitchen. Jade could feel his gaze from where he sat at the island counter with a plate of food as she walked to the food dispenser and materialized an apple. She sat down on a stool next to him and he stopped frowning, which was nearly as good as a smile from him.

“So, if you’re not busy tonight, maybe we could watch another troll movie or something?” Jade asked him. “Rose still wants to spend time with Kanaya over me and Dave said he and his ill beats were honeymooning by themselves tonight, whatever that means.”

Karkat made a noise in the back of his throat like he was coughing up a hairball. “I’m so not busy on this fucking damn space rock that I’m actually going negative in activity levels. My body is slowly being petrified. If we ever get off this stupid meteor, you’re going to just have to use me as a lawn ring statue in your new universe.”

Jade giggled, and he looked pleased. “Anyway, yeah, sure, why not,” Karkat said gruffly, looking back down at his lunch. He tore his sandwich in half and dropped one side in front of her on the counter. “Try that. I made it with troll food and I want to know if you humans think it’s edible.” He sounded casual but glanced at her from the corner of his eye.

She bit her lip. One little bite would be fine. She picked it up and nibbled off a corner, wrinkling her nose at the taste. Super-salty meat and bread that tasted like dirt. “I think I’ll pass on the rest,” she said dryly, pushing it back to him.

“Well that’s just rude!” a voice exclaimed from behind her. “You should make more of an effort to appreciate other cultures.” Terezi walked past her and fell onto the stool on the other side of Karkat. She slumped over the counter, lanky arms sprawled across the stone, and then burrowed against his arms, knife-sharp cheekbones pressing against his sweatshirt. Karkat flushed red a little and looked fondly down at the troll girl while Jade tried to swallow the growing lump in her throat and the stomach cramps that felt like actual death. Maybe he’d look at her with that same glowing gentleness if she was as angular and sharp as Terezi? “Karkat, come hang out with meee,” Terezi moaned. “I’ve got a bunch of chalk left you can help me wear down.”

He shook his head and stood up, pushing her off him. “My delightful friend Harley here and I are going to participate in interspecies cultural bonding by me showing her delightful movies she’s never seen, which a certain dragon-caped troll never wants to watch with me. And we are going to do that as soon as I finish eating, which is right—“ he stuffed the last of the sandwich in his mouth— “now.” Karkat tugged on Jade’s arm. “Leth’s gwo,” he said around the mouthful of food, and waved goodbye to Terezi while leading Jade down the hallway to the bedrooms.

“Karkat, you didn’t have to do that! You could’ve hung out with her,” Jade argued as he opened his door and stepped back to let her into his room. He swallowed the food bulging in his mouth while he started setting up the movie.

“Yeah, I did, or I’d be stuck in a fruity chalk dust cloud until next month probably, and I can think of better ways to spend my time,” he grumbled. He fell silent as he shuffled his DVDs around.

It was only when she leaned over to kick off her left shoe, straightened up, and nearly fell over as the blood rushed out of her head did she realize something was wrong. Her brain felt thick and fuzzy. She knew she shouldn’t have had the bite of sandwich— it was poisoning her whole body. She sat down again and struggled to get her right shoe off with trembling hands.

“Jade?”

Karkat’s voice sounded like it was coming from underwater. She willed herself to stop shaking.

“Jade!”

Her eyes snapped to Karkat’s face. He was shaking her, his hands on her shoulders. “I was talking to you! You just fucking zoned out on me, what the fuck?” His face was screwed up and pissed off, but his eyes, wide as saucers, were full of worry. She smiled weakly at him. 

“I’m fine, relax!” she chirped as perkily as she could.The light-headedness would surely pass in a minute. Her blood sugar was probably just a little low.

She stood up, and crumpled to the ice-cold floor at his feet.

“Jade!! “ Karkat shouted, falling to his knees next to her. She felt his hands hovering over her skin, like he didn’t know what to do. He brushed her bangs out of her eyes and pressed the back of his hand to her forehead. “Jesus, you’re fucking freezing.” 

He pushed his hands under her body and lifted her like it was nothing, placing her on his bed gently, before shaking her arm violently like a damn Etch-a-Sketch.

 

“When was the last time you ate?? And don’t you dare fucking lie to me,” he hissed at her.

She shrunk under his interrogation and looked away. Hot tears started rolling down her face, soaking her hair. “I can’t remember,” she said softly. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Like HELL it isn’t,” Karkat spat at her. “Don’t even think about moving,” he said, pointing at her. He spun and left the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.


	7. Toast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All Jade wants is for Karkat to think about her the way she thinks about him at 3am every night.

Jade curled up against the wall on top of Karkat’s blanket, fighting back the swell of emotions within her. Fear that at this very moment he was telling literally everyone on the meteor about her and her issues. Cheeks hot with embarrassment from the way he had looked at her before he left, like he couldn’t believe he had to put up with her. Anger at herself, for being too weak and too much of a failure. And the most overwhelming emotion of all- grief. She had definitely ruined— well, whatever the fuck she had with Karkat. He probably thought she was a freak. She furiously swiped away the tears on her face.

The door slammed open (did he ever do anything gently?) and Karkat marched in, carrying a plate with lots of buttered toast. He looked royally pissed off. Jade slowly pushed herself up so she was sitting, and yelped as he nearly threw the plate of toast into her lap. 

“If you don’t make that disappear down your protein chute within the next fifteen minutes, you will hereby lose all your rights to watching a troll movie with me for as long as we’re stuck in this fucking lab,” he said to her, sounding far more shouty and crabby then he usually did around her. He climbed onto his bed to sit next to her, clenching and unclenching his fists like he was trying to resist the impulse to punch something.

She looked down at the plate. Three pieces of toast at 60 calories each was 120 calories, plus the generous amount of butter and jelly he had smeared on each… 400 calories? 450? She couldn’t be sure with food she hadn’t made herself. Her hands were trembling like leaves in a hurricane. She wasn’t even sure if she could physically pick up the dumb piece of bread. She felt the warmth of tears on her face before she even registered that she had started to cry.

“Oh, fuck. Jade, don't cry. _Jade._ ”

She looked up at Karkat. He reached up and brushed her tears away with his thumb and then took her hand, intertwining his fingers with her shaking ones, his cheeks flushing as he did so. He looked, for once, at a loss for words.

“I— I’m not mad at you. I mean, I am mad at you. I’m always mad at everyone. But like— fuck— I’m not gonna stay mad at you for this. It just really fucking stresses me out when I’m worrying about my friends.” 

Jade wasn’t exactly sure if that made her feel better or not. She couldn’t look him in the eyes. “So you knew?”

“Eat and I’ll talk.”

She picked up a piece of toast, eyed it, and took a bite. She tried not to close her eyes at the pleasure of tasting butter again. She chewed and swallowed, and took another bite.

Karkat sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I kinda guessed what you were doing. I mean, I had no fucking clue what you were actually doing, because not eating on purpose is not a thing people do that I’ve heard of on Alternia. I just thought you were being human and weird. And when I asked Rose about it, she just said you were being Jade and weird and not to worry, too. So I started looking it up on the internet and the stuff I read really freaked me out. I thought you were too smart to stop eating on purpose. But you started looking sick. I didn’t know what to do.”

“I don’t want anyone to worry about me,” she said quietly.

“Yeah, well, you don’t get that choice, that’s not how life works. I'll worry about you as much as I damn please. Your fate is to live a good and long life, and not die early because you don’t want to eat a pudding cup.”

“I wasn’t going to _die_.”

“Tell that to the girl who turned as pale as Kanaya and literally collapsed on my feet like fifteen minutes ago.”

She took another bite of toast. “You don’t usually yell at me anymore,” she said. “I thought you might not want to hang out with me now.”

He frowned at her. “You deserved it. Also, why the fuck would I not want to hang out with you anymore?”

“Because I’m a freak who is afraid of toast?”

He took her now-empty plate and set it to the side. “Feel any better?” he asked, ignoring her question. Jade nodded. The fuzziness in her head was fading quickly now.

He leaned back against the wall and shifted a bit so he could look at her full-on. “So you’re self-conscious about some parts of yourself. I still haven’t outright told all my friends what my blood color is. I don’t see you abandoning me because I don’t like a part of myself,” Karkat replied. “I just—” he hesitated, his forehead wrinkling. “Why did you start in the first place?”

Jade could feel her face flame. It felt like there was a boa constrictor around her heart, squeezing the life out of her. “Um…” she started, trying to decide if it was worth it to tell him. He hadn’t left her now. Maybe if she told him the truth, he wouldn’t go running.

“Because of Terezi,” she whispered finally. “Not just Terezi. Rose and Kanaya too. Terezi especially, though. Just, seeing her every day. And— um— how you act around her. That was the main reason. You look at her like she’s the sun, like she’s the center of your world.” She trailed off, waiting.

Karkat was silent.

Jade kept babbling like an idiot, unable to stand the quiet. “It was stupid. I know that. I’m sorry. I just wanted you to look at me like— like you always wanted me around.” She willed the tears blurring her vision not to fall. “Look, never mind, okay? I’ll eat more. I promise. It didn’t do me any good in the end, anyway.” She tried to pull her hand away from Karkat’s so she could abscond and not have to sit in the oppressing silence anymore, and shifted to get up off the bed.

“Harley? No, fuck, wait—” he said, and in the next heartbeat she was being pulled backward towards him. He let go of her hand to put his arm around her shoulders and pull her close to him, against his side.

The tears that had been threatening to show again spilled over. She wound her arms around his waist and smushed herself as close to him as possible. He stroked her hair very lightly. “Shhhh. Shhh. God, you’re dumb sometimes for someone who is good at like, fucking rocket science and shit. Why the hell do you think I wanted to spend time with you and not Terezi?”

She tried to control her crying from turning into full out sobs. She failed miserably. Her body shook and her tears soaked his sweatshirt.

“Hey, hey! Come on, what happened to the Jade I met over the internet by a damn miracle all those years ago, back when you still hated me?”

“I don’t know,” she choked into his shoulder. “I can’t find her.”

He rubbed her back in slow circles. “Well, I’m looking at her. She just got a little sidetracked from who she really is, is all. And… and she’s funny and smart and adorable, and she’s just as beautiful now as she was when we first became friends.”

He looked down at her, his eyes searching her face, the tell-tale scarlet of his blood rising in his cheeks. “You’ve always been beautiful, Jade. Inside and out. You don’t need to try to make yourself someone you’re not. And…” he paused, looking slightly terrified. “I’ve always wanted you around. And you’re wrong about Terezi being the center of my world, by the way.”

Jade rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand. “She flirts with you all the time.”

"Terezi likes meddling in people’s business and pissing people off on purpose. Yeah, at one point, she was a huge part of my world. Then the boundaries of my world expanded and I met amazing people that I had no clue existed. Also, she’s fucking my moirail. Call me a hopeless romantic, but I don’t want my quadrants in quadrants with my other quadrants.”

“So you don’t want her as your girlfriend?”

“It’s called a matesprit, fuckstick. But seriously, I thought I was making it really fucking obvious ever since you got here with John.”

Jade held her breath.

“If anyone is the center of my world, it’s you,” he said quietly. “I wanted you before the meteor, and I wanted you when you first got here, and I want you now. That was always a constant. You didn’t have to change anything about yourself to make me want to be with you. I was already there.” 

She tilted her head up so she could see his whole face. He looked scared. Before she could take another breath, he had one hand tangled in her hair, the other against her lower back, and his lips on hers. He kissed her like he had been waiting for years, like he was going to make her whole again.

She giggled when he finally let her go. “Oh, _there’s_ my Harley,” he said, and for the first time she had ever seen, he smiled at her.

\-----

Karkat insisted on her sleeping in his room instead of hers, so she wasn’t lonely. She insisted he sleep in the bed with her instead of on the floor. Jade fell asleep in his arms with a full belly and an even fuller heart, and knew that everything would finally be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Let me know what you thought of it. :)


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